donna-sue and martin's amazing adventure (aka: ds & m see America)

 Of course before leaving, visiting favorite spots is a must. Lake Champlain from Splash. With Josh and Camryn. (Judging from my attire, I clearly think it is hotter than everyone else does. 🤣) ✅ Camper: found, purchased, and redesigned. ✅ House renovation: "donenough" (meaning, in a "perfect world" ... not as much done as I would like, but enough that Josh and Cam can move in and then finish up the rest as they want.) Two big tasks left, packing and moving out of our bedroom. How do you pack everything you need for six months (really 3 years since we are leaving the camper and flying home for the holidays each year) with varying conditions, say 10° to 100+°, sunshine to mists to downpours, beaches to mountains to deserts, cities to towns to campgrounds, sidewalks to trails to remote and rugged corners of our country, shoes, boots, pants, shorts, shirts, etc AND have it fit in a thimble? Ok, a shelf (well 1 bigger shelf and 1 little shelf,

✅. Camper purchased and interior decore change completed. House renovation to do.  We've done alot of this sort of thing before. We've added a bath and we move walls around like most people change wall paper. All this to try and meet the needs of our growing family. But, for those of you who are clever, you may have picked up on something … our family has long grown and left the nest, so we haven't done a major interior house project in 15 years and what used to be relatively easy and quick … wasn't anymore. 🤔 We got it done … but it all took much longer than we anticipated and hoped. Ah, hope does indeed spring eternal in the breast of man.  We never would have finished without Ben, major Sherpa duties, and Grace doing all they could as time (and Covid) would allow. Ethan and Stephanie who came for a farewell/send-off vacation which turned into a priming, painting, scraping, cleaning, buffing, more sherpaing, demoing and tiling vacation and of course to J

Shopping for a camper/ travel trailer. This took a significant amount of time. Not wanting to leave any possibility unexamined, we searched expos and showrooms, Craig's list and classifieds. From Maine south to Pennsylvania and West to Ohio. Put an engineer and a scientist together ... what do you get? Thorough research complete with pros and cons and plenty of spread sheets!  We ended up with a sort of Goldilocks experience. We found one, of European design, that was sleek and beautiful. The essence of form and function.  I was in love ❤️ ❤️❤️ But it was too small. Then we found one with gorgeous, big, wrap- around windows along the back and side. We stayed in those swivel rockers looking out those windows and dreaming for almost 30 minutes before reality hit. It was too big. Finally we found one that we thought would be just right! EXCEPT ... when it came in, it was very dark and drab inside. It was like a cave. ☹️ This would never do. We just had to fix it. Another task for

So, you've decided you want to travel around the country for three years seeing all the marvels there are to see (or at least as many as you can).  That sounds fabulous, right? But how???  Well, let's say we start with 1. Accommodations.   Lodges/hotels ?? Hello, we're not made of                                          money and hope to have                                          some left to live on after                                          the trip is over = a hard NO    Tent ??                    ABSOLUTELY NOT !!!!!                                              (Read that as "a hard NO"                                         also, just in case in there                                        were any doubts) 🤣   Rv ??                       Don't really want to have to                                      drive everywhere in our                                            "house".  We could tow a                                          ca

As any good gardener or director of talents: be they musical, of the stage or of the fiber arts or a farmer considering how their output may increase or a teacher thinking of what might be accomplished or a church committee looking to the future, there is the spark of an idea. That idea catches flame and becomes a dream. And of course, what all those people know, is that it takes a lot of planning to make an idea a reality.  It also takes perseverance. And a lot of dreaming.  Don't forget the dreaming! Martin has always been ready for an adventure, to go places and see things and have new experiences. It is one of the things that I've always loved about him.  I was an avid, no that's too tame, I was a ferocious reader as a girl and I always dreamed of seeing the people, the places, the animals, really, just everything I read about. Everything my imagination then took and extrapolated into something so interesting and incredible and fascinating. But I never thoug